Pentaheptite Modifications of the Graphite Sheet

Pentaheptites (three-coordinate tilings of the plane by pentagons and heptagons only) are classified under the chemically motivated restriction that all pentagons occur in isolated pairs and all heptagons have three heptagonal neighbors. They span a continuum between the two lattices exemplified by the boron nets in ThMoB₄ (cmm) and YCrB₄ (pgg), in analogy with the crossover from cubic-close-packed to hexagonal-close-packed packings in 3D. Symmetries realizable for these pentaheptite layers are three strip groups (periodic in one dimension), p1a1, p112, and p111, and five Fedorov groups (periodic in two dimensions), cmm, pgg, pg, p2, and p1. All can be constructed by simultaneous rotation of the central bonds of pyrene tilings of the graphite sheet. The unique lattice of cmm symmetry corresponds to the previously proposed pentaheptite carbon metal. Analogous pentagon-heptagon tilings on other surfaces including the torus, Klein bottle, and cylinder, face-regular tilings of pentagons and b-gons, and a full characterization of tilings involving isolated pairs and/or triples of pentagons are presented. The Kelvin paradigm of a continuum of structures arising from propagation of two original motifs has many potential applications in 2D and 3D.